When You Feel Like You’re “a Glass Case of Emotion,” This Might Help

A few weeks ago, I parked outside my grandma’s house feeling tired. From the hour of bumper-to-bumper traffic I’d sat in to get there, to the cul-de-sac above the palm canyon, to the homeless woman taking a shower in the bathroom at Jack-in-the-Box when I was dying to pee, I was a bundle of bad vibes as an NPR reporter described the scene as the President came in to give his State of the Union Address. But things started to shift when my grandma greeted me at the door. She was wearing a special outfit. I vacuumed her floor. She asked me if I wanted a soda. Crackers. Ice cream? I felt her love for me, I think, radiating like a space heater. And hours later, in the theatre as the credits rolled for Joy, I felt like a different person.

Anthony Doerr was once said: “To say a person is a happy person or an unhappy person is ridiculous. We are a thousand different kinds of people every hour.” And I agree with Doerr. Have you, for instance, ever felt like Monday and Tuesday should be decades apart instead of hours? Because Monday was the equivalent of Care Bears sliding down rainbow slides, and the free chocolate at See’s Candies, and the expansive feeling of a new love starting to take hold. But on Tuesday, you broke up with the new love, and your grandma was put in the hospital with life-threatening diverticulitis. Your Monday you and your Tuesday you then, don’t speak the same language. They can’t even understand each other.

There are the people we will be that we haven’t met yet. Like bridesmaids for our best friends. Like an old woman, playing her friend’s favorite song at his wake. And then there are these people we are every day. The people that change and step forward and rotate positions with each other as if in some complicated dance. The people who are like piano keys. If you opened the top of the piano, you would see keys moving up and down. Every day we present notes to the world. What is sounded is always changing.

Happy Fri-yay, everyone. This was a short post – I had some writing deadlines/work this week, but I want to keep a regular blogging schedule, so keep planning on Fridays!